Ironically a Post on Twitter

Since I am forcing a bunch of students to write blogs for my own personal amusement, I figured I might as well make one myself.

Today I saw my girlfriend, went to class and made smalltalk with the people there, but spent most of my day sitting at my computer reading the news and other such things. Funny thing is that I feel like I have been sitting with a bunch of people.

Thanks to Twitter I am connected to so many people. For example, my co-TA Whit and I have probably never been closer since we started twittering. Likewise, there are many people whom I know but rarely see in person whom I feel like I know way too well thanks to Twitter. On top of this I am in very close contact with some of my favorite writers, bloggers, and artists who all let me into their lives with every twitter they make.

To be so close to these all these people is amazing, but the most interesting thing about it all is not what Wil Wheaton had for breakfast that day, but that we are all part of the same culture.

We are all feeling the same things for the deaths of people we cared about, for the little news articles that move the world slightly, and for everything else that we are all seeing and experiencing all at once. it is sort of like if the Borg were able to have individuality and share their thoughts all at the same time.

I was never truly convinced of all the Web 2.0 technologies that we had before, but Twitter is showing just one, very simple, way in which we are all connected. This feeling is no where for me in blogs or social network sites or anywhere else on the Web.

This is because twittering is spontaneous for all of us. It isn't edited beyond the moment it is written. Few twitters are worth reading too far into the past as well. Each twitter is just like so much of our lives, seemingly unimportant unless watched continuously. And as we follow each other we begin to develop a deep sense of community that is not intrusive, but totally comforting.